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Glenn Greenwald Goes Off on Daily Beast’s ‘Crappy,’ ‘Evidence-Free’ Snowden ‘Smear’

By Matt WilsteinJan 3rd, 2014, 4:04 pm

The Daily Beast published an article Friday claiming Edward Snowden “lied about his contacts with China,” and therefore does not deserve clemency as The New York Times editorial board has argued. it wasn’t long before journalist Glenn Greenwald began tearing down the piece and its author, Gordon G. Chang, on Twitter.


Below is a look at what Greenwald had to say about the piece Friday afternoon, while likely driving large amounts of traffic to it:

Greenwald is particularly outraged by the fact that Chang attributes his accusations against Snowden to an anonymous source in Hong Kong who allegedly claims the former NSA contractor has “high-level contact” with Chinese officials there. In his June discussion with Greenwald in that country, Snowden said, “I have had no contact with the Chinese government.”

Chang also credits the Beijing government with not only helping “orchestrate” Snowden’s flight from Hong Kong to his ultimate destination in Russia, but also “encouraging” him to leave Hawaii in the first place. Neither of those assertions are accompanied by sourced evidence.

As one of Greenwald’s followers pointed out, Chang’s “most famous book,” The Coming Collapse of China, “predicted China would collapse by 2006.”

[photo via Flickr/Gage Skidmore]

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